Cabot bids ‘Princess Diaries’ series farewell - Entertainment, Books - Army Times

Cabot bids ‘Princess Diaries’ series farewell

Meg Cabot tools around Key West on bicycles whose colors — pink, purple and turquoise — match the covers of her popular Princess Diaries series.

A new bike in a new color isn’t in Cabot’s future; her series about a reluctant teen royal is coming to an end. The last book, “Volume X: Forever Princess” (HarperTeen, $16.99), goes on sale Tuesday.

“It’s bittersweet,” says Cabot, 41, who, with husband Benjamin and cats Henrietta and Gem, lives in an 1870s-era home in Florida. “It’s a lot harder than I thought it would be to say goodbye.”

Cabot introduced teens to Mia Thermopolis, princess of Genovia, in 2000’s “The Princess Diaries.” Since then, readers have followed the adventures of the modern American girl, who at 14 found that ruling a (fictional) kingdom was her destiny. Ending the series with Mia graduating from high school was always Cabot’s goal: “I really didn’t plan anything beyond when she was 18.”

The series has spent a combined 82 weeks on USA Today’s Best-Selling Books list. More than 5 million copies have been sold in the USA and 15 million worldwide.

The books became ingrained in popular culture when Mia’s story was told in two movies — “The Princess Diaries” (2001) and “The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004),” starring Anne Hathaway as Mia and Julie Andrews as her grandmother. “Every girl who writes me says, ‘Mia’s exactly like me except she’s a princess,’ ” Cabot says. “She really does have that Everygirl voice and Everygirl problems. Readers relate to her.”

In “Forever Princess,” Mia writes a historical romance novel as her senior project. That novel, “Ransom My Heart” by Princess of Genovia Mia Thermopolis (with help from Meg Cabot), also is on sale Tuesday (Avon, $14.99).

Ransom was written in the 1990s when Cabot, writing under the name Patricia Cabot, published seven romance novels. At the time, Cabot could generate little interest in Ransom. Now, she says with a laugh, “it’s getting way better reviews than Patricia Cabot ever got.”

Ransom may be the only novel “Mia” writes, but not so for Cabot.

The third book in her tween series “Allie Finkle’s Rules for Girls” goes on sale in March. “Being Nikki,” Book 2 in her Airhead series about a tomboy whose brain is transplanted into the body of a supermodel, arrives in May.

“And maybe someday,” Cabot teases, “you’ll be hearing about ‘Princess Diaries: The College Years.’ ”